A past and a future for diversification on farms? Some evidence from large-scale, commercial farms in South East England

Diversification has been identified as a common response to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s and to the changing ethos of agricultural policy in the closing decade of the 20th century. In particular, farmers operating large-scale farms have been prominent in adopting this approach, just as they were innovative across a range of farming practices in the expansion and modernisation of their agricultural production in earlier decades. Can we identify serial diversifiers within this sector of the farming community, who are disposed to react in an entrepreneurial fashion to the changing fortunes of agriculture? The paper draws on results from a survey of large-scale commercial farmers in South East England and, by examining the sequence in which various forms of diversification were adopted, identifies a temporal pattern as farmers responded to the fluctuating fortunes of the agricultural industry over the last 30 years. But has the potential for diversification been exhausted? The paper also considers future prospects for diversification within the large-scale, commercially oriented sector of the agricultural industry

Farm diversification in England and Wales A comparison of participants and non-participants in the Farm Diversification Grant Scheme (1988)

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:6217.4975(LU-DG-OP--21) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Economics of fragmented land for vegetable growers in Skopje and the Southeastern region of the Republic of Macedonia

This paper examines the influence of land fragmentation on the value of vegetables produced in the Skopje and Southeastern regions of the Republic of Macedonia. The analysis uses models such as a Cobb-Douglas production function as well as a General Linear Model. The findings support a negative and statistically significant impact of land fragmentation on the productivity and profitability of vegetable production in the study area. A reduction from 0.43 to 0.2 of the Simpson index, on average, increases vegetable production by approximately 7.06%. However, the results reveal that land is of somewhat less importance due to the opportunity to use greenhouse technology. The results based on the linear model reveal that the introduction of greenhouse technology increases the value of production by around 32%. Nevertheless, appropriate policies ought to promote successful land consolidation further

Evaluative constructions of domestic tourist places

Personal construct theory was used to study potential tourists\u27 appraisive images of the major Australian domestic tourist destinations. Seven main evaluative constructs (bipolar discriminations) were identified as being commonly used to appraise destinations. The second stage of the research involved the scoring of places on those seven constructs by potential tourists. Principal components analysis of the resultant matrices showed that construct space generally comprised one main dimension which was labelled favourable - unfavourable. An exception was that older women used two dimensions when appraising destinations. These dimensions were labelled frenetic - relaxing and dull -exciting. Respondents distinguished clearly between destinations and the distinctions made were remarkably consistent over different groups of respondents defined on the basis of age, sex, and location

An approach to the management of orchards that are vulnerable to attack by invasive species

Discrete time Markov chain, Invasive species, Orchard management, Tree replacement, Q24, C44,